


Bolthole Mixtape: Song 4

by ItsSweaterWeather



Series: Bolthole Mix Tape [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Agonizingly slow burn, Angst, Awkwardness, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Inspired by Music, POV Molly Hooper, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pre TFP, Series, Sherlolly - Freeform, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Taking the long way to Post-TFP, follows BBC episodic canon, inspired by another work, part 4 of series, simmering feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-01 16:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13299039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsSweaterWeather/pseuds/ItsSweaterWeather
Summary: They stood almost toe-to-toe, neither of them in a hurry to restart the tour.His eyes roamed over her face, from the severe part of her ponytail to the softer edges of her hairline then slid across her temple. Lower, to the hollow of her neck. To the tiny mole just under her jaw.He followed the big muscle - her sternocleidomastoid - to where it wrapped around her clavicle. When he lost sight of those slender bones, hidden under the heavy rolled neck of her sweater, Sherlock’s imagination took over."I haven't had a flatmate since uni," she mused, "but...it's not like... I don't think of you as my flatmate or anything...I just meant it'd might be fun to order a pizza or maybe watch a movie, after Bart's..."





	Bolthole Mixtape: Song 4

**Author's Note:**

> So much for timely posting... Apparently, the holidays get to fictional characters and real-life writers alike.
> 
> It's well into the New Year! Sherlock and John have wrapped up The Blind Banker. Now our antihero finds himself between cases, alone and fidgety. A bolthole, by definition, is a place to hole up, hide out, escape danger in relative safety. Since the danger is in his head, Sherlock might've done better to wait it out in the blind greenhouse at Kew Gardens instead of the home of one _moderately intriguing_ pathologist (his words, not mine. I think Molly is the bee's knees).
> 
> While you needn't read the previous Mixtapes to get a handle on what's what - my stories follow bbc episodic canon, all the 'stuff' that _obviously_ went on between Molly  & Sherlock behind the scenes - there are a few callbacks to Songs 2 & 3.
> 
> As with previous songs, I had the lyrics but not the tune until I met you. This series is held loosely in place and inspired by [ sunken_standard's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunken_standard/pseuds/sunken_standard) exquisite work [So What Was Your Last Girlfriend Like?](https://archiveofourown.org/series/719403) I claim no rights to that work or its brilliance.
> 
>   _Betas are rare. Grammar mistakes, foul punctuation, and inconsistencies of tense are not. Thank you for your continued understanding. - The Management_

###  [Trouble Sleeping - Corinne Bailey Rae](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wc0qMerzz0)

**March 2011 - Dense fog makes the evening a muddle.**

Sherlock flattened his palm against the drawer front. Its warped grain rippled under his skin, bold as Braille to a blind man.

_Stop. Do not. Don't._

The warning served him right. He’d spent the last few weeks outsmarting fatigue, staving off sleep with a diet of strong tea and stronger biscuits. Round and round his brain spun, abetted by the one-two punch of caffeine and sugar, trying to conjure ‘Moriarty’ from nothing more than smoke. Less than that. At least one could see smoke, watch the tendrils float through the air before the hydrocarbons evaporated.

The same could not be said of Moriarty.

Sherlock knew his devil lay somewhere in the details. His last two cases offered all the necessary clues.

Some of the clues.

Very few of the clues.

Possibilities taunted him from the pages of police reports and the results of forensic tests. He'd retreated to his mind palace, searched through reams of invisible data until he’d exhausted himself. Then he wandered his labyrinthine stacks some more. The cabbie. General Shan. The maddening dearth of any inspired criminal activity as of late. All of it went together.

Somehow.

His brain had topped out at maximum speed hours ago, maybe days ago. Hard to tell. Even store brand tea bags and name brand ginger nuts lost their efficacy after multiple doses. Now, the manic pace he'd set had taken its toll on his cognitive skills. But the dead weight of sleep just would not take him.

So here he stood, a chicken mindlessly pecking about Molly Hooper's flat without his head.

He'd no business in her bedroom. His brain shouted marching orders at him to underscore the point: _Walk out the same way you came and do not stop until your feet touch the treads at Baker Street. Go. Now._

His body failed to heed, however, legs frozen in place, fingers caressing the lip of the drawer.

Sherlock had encountered enough bedside chests like Molly's chipped second-hand piece to stay well clear of hers. He’d surveyed the contents of such lockers before, both as a consulting detective and as a civilian; receptacles of private lives made public; well public of a sort anyway. Certainly not Fort Knox. If people wanted to hide their little foibles from the world, they could do better than shoving the bits and bobs into bedside drawers. Mrs. Hudson, for instance, used to keep hers stocked with a wide assortment of herbal soothers in various formulas. Used to… until she returned home to discover her supply mysteriously shrunk by two-thirds and one of her tenants displaying an alarming appetite in addition to his customary distorted sense of time. After that, his landlady got more inventive with her hiding places, predictably so, and less likely to remember where she'd stashed her secret stashes.

Bad luck for Mrs. Hudson’s hip. Good fortune for one consulting detective with keen olfactory nerves and excellent deductive skills.

The details of Molly Hooper's private life did not warrant further deduction. Apart from her position at Bart’s he had little reason to think of her at all. She fulfilled the pathology department’s feeble attempt to strong-arm Mycroft, suggesting that Sherlock have a chaperone.

He found Mycroft’s acquiescence more than curious. The elder Holmes had a shadowy reputation for, if not down-grading entire institutions full-stop, questioning their incontrovertible funding from his minor position within the British government rather than agreeing to anyone's terms but his own. More than one board of directors found itself scrambling for new sources of income until they saw the _value_ of doing his bidding.

Molly’s installation as Sherlock’s governess marked a departure for Mycroft. Big brother did not like being told what to do.

Sherlock did not appreciate having a shadow.

_"Those are the rules, dear brother. Miss Hooper or bust."_ He'd heard Mycroft's smirk through the phone. Big brother always make a habit of calling with news he found too amusing to relay via text.

Sherlock didn't much care for rules. In his experience, the provenance of most traced back to the capricious whims of delusional, power-mad firstborn sons.

And small-boned pathologists.

On the evening he and Molly finalized their bolthole agreement, he ended their negotiations with a handshake, she with an addendum. Or four.

> Sherlock gulped down the last of the wine in one swallow, chafing at her line of questioning about his family, about him, and stared into the black night.

> _“Molly."_ He avoided looking at her, firing her name over the balcony railing instead, confident that he'd not have to follow his warning shot with a direct hit.
> 
> He could unload a canon at her if she persisted.
> 
> Cool air swirled around her little balcony. He wrapped his coat tighter and crossed his arms over his chest. Even under the weight of the wool, his skin felt thin as tissue paper.
> 
> Her eyes cut through him sharp as a knife.
> 
> “I just meant…why does he think you need so much looking after, your brother?"
> 
> Sherlock shot her a dark look. “I can get into a lot of trouble."
> 
> He offered nothing more. She'd not earned the right to an explanation.
> 
> He'd not earned the right to bother her.
> 
> “Oh. I see…” She turned toward the sound of the Overground and pulled at her ponytail, a nervous tick he'd come to associate with her when she was deep in thought.
> 
> He enjoyed watching her think.
> 
> _No. You don’t._
> 
> She cast a sidelong glance at him. Taking measure, no doubt, of the man she'd just agreed to share her flat with. Possibly planning to back out. A wise second thought. She'd no idea how much trouble he could get into. He was as far from the little boy he once was in Sussex. His younger escapades never amounted to much beyond stirring up the beehives and standing too close to bonfires.
> 
> _House fires._
> 
> Where did that come from?
> 
> “Molly. Look at me.” He wrapped his words in barbed wire, rigid and sharp. She didn't see but he'd make it clear, even if he hurt her.
> 
> He fully expected Molly to bolt out of her chair and rescind the use her flat. He'd applaud her decision if she did and silently thank Christ that one of them had come to their senses before bigger mistakes were made.
> 
> "I see," she repeated. Her quiet conviction blared loud and persistent as police sirens.
> 
> “You don’t _see,_ Molly.” He swallowed, forcing additional words back the way they'd come. So help him, he needed her to _see_ , to understand. But not with words. He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and breathe understanding into her, surrender to her, let her coax all the trouble from his mouth until there was nothing left of him. Until it flooded her dim balcony, her little flat. Her body.
> 
> Where did that come from?
> 
> _Somewhere not at all unpleasant._
> 
> “OK. Well, I don’t _see_. But, whatever it is, Sherlock, we could help you. Get through it, I mean.”
> 
> “We?”
> 
> “Yeah. Your flatmate and I.”
> 
> His eyes swept over her face. “Why?” he asked. Curious rather than suspicious.
> 
> “That’s what friends do,” she shrugged. “C'mon. I'll get you that key."
> 
> She stood up and, for a brief moment, loomed over him, buried under a mass of wool and cotton. The layers of natural fiber warmed her skin, amplifying the clean, bright scent of her scalp and the soft, unmistakeable bite of alcohol on her breath.
> 
> Sunshine and a fair amount of shadow in the middle of his black night.
> 
> She extended her hand and he took it without thinking. "So, let me show you round, then."
> 
> Sherlock dutifully followed her inside, subconsciously timing his gait to the swing of her ponytail./p>
> 
> _Too consciously._
> 
> The vibration of his phone sent Sherlock careening off course. He swore under his breath - why he wasn't sure - and fished it from of his pocket. Lestrade. Friday night bloomed with potential. Time to find safer schemes in the company of the criminal classes. He'd gotten himself into more than enough trouble here.
> 
> "The furnace makes a terrible rattle when it first comes on, like an airplane taking off," she was saying, oblivious to the interruption. Molly's words were a touch thick from the wine she'd occupied herself with while he'd conducted a two-hour recon of her home's physical features.
> 
> A guided tour at this point was unnecessary. He could cut short her tour now. Leave.
> 
> He should doe all those things...
> 
> She drifted past him, heading into the kitchen. She opened cupboards and pointed out where he might find mugs and sugar. 
> 
> "How unexpected, to find tea supplies on the first shelf above the kettle." 
> 
> If she caught his mocking, Molly didn't acknowledge it. Instead, she smiled sheepishly and went through every last appliance on her worktop. "...and last, but certainly not least, this is the vegetable steamer —“
> 
> "In the unlikely event that an urge to cook Brussels sprouts overtakes me," he groused.
> 
> A loud snort rattled around the kitchen. Molly’s embarrassment - and, perhaps, the wine - only prompted a string of louder snorts.
> 
> He hadn’t expected such a robust sound from such a small woman. Molly often met his sarcasm with flustered stammering and wide eyes in the lab. Here though, in her own flat, she erupted like a brass band, bright and mellow and charming.
> 
> Sherlock wondered what it might take to get her to snort again. 
> 
> His mobile buzzed.
> 
> Reluctantly, he abandoned all thought of the noises he might induce and scanned the screen. Weekends always found Lestrade and company in over their heads as indicated by the wave of messages.
> 
> She paid no mind, wandering out of the kitchen, and continued to list abnormalities he'd already noted.
> 
> "Oh! And there's a very squeaky bit of floor. Just here," she said, heading toward the loo with the breezy assurance that he'd follow.
> 
> Sherlock did, making a concerted effort not to trip over his feet in a fierce desire to close the distance between them.
> 
> He pulled rein suddenly, alarmed at his eagerness, and drew his focus back to his phone. He searched for a life preserver in the pixels of his glowing screen; something to cling to so as not to drown under her blithe voice and dimpled half-smiles. 
> 
> A couple of promising crimes emerged: an elaborate robbery of the underground safe deposit facility in Hatton Garden and, across the city, a hand had turned up missing its third digit - and its body.
> 
> He'd take his chances out on the malevolent streets rather than the third floor at number 59 Larkhall Rise.
> 
> "I only point out the floor because if you could avoid it, Sherlock, that'd keep me in good company with the boys downstairs."
> 
> He pursed his lips, ready to sally a long-winded sigh over the top of her head and stopped.
> 
> She blinked up at him, eyes heavy-lidded and dewy. He picked out the individual colours: metallic gold, verdant green, and rich sable - each one of them glittering in the soft light of her flat. The lab's cool fluorescents muddied the mosaic to a single, flat brown. But here...
> 
> All the colours skewed in the dusky hallway, tipping like beads in a kaleidoscope. Spacial relation and proportion shifted, too; the walls seemed longer, the ceiling rose higher.
> 
> Even hidden under a pair of shapeless trousers and possibly the most ill-fitting of her charity shop sweater collection, Sherlock was alarmingly aware of her body. Free of the lab coat and safety goggles she often wore at Bart's, Molly looked impossibly petite.
> 
> _She could disappear in your shadow._
> 
> She laughed a little too high and bright for so late at night. For his shadow.
> 
> Molly sprang from one foot to the other in an attempt to replicate the 'squeaky bit' of floor for him. "Ahhh, well, it figures," she mumbled, "won't squeak on demand." Unfazed, she redoubled her efforts. Her ponytail bounced in maddening syncopation, up when she went down, down when she went up. The thick rope of hair slapped between her shoulder blades in musical counterbalance like a baton leading its conductor.
> 
> The half-beats of her movements made music; short strokes on strings. Not Bach. Molly was too small and chirpy for his baroque moodiness. Boccherini. The string quintet. First and second violins at lilting odds and in perfect harmony.
> 
> He inhaled and shook the melody out of his head before she had a chance to flourish.
> 
> _It._ Before _it_ had a chance to flourish.
> 
> His mobile pinged a third time. Lestrade.
> 
> "Oh," the corners of her mouth slanted downward. "Sorry. I'm keeping you from things. Work things."
> 
> "No!" His voice clanged around them. "I, em, nothing important. Just John. Watson. Flatmate."
> 
> Sherlock waved his phone, motioning for her to continue with the tour. Evidence collection at robbery scenes typically lasted hours anyway, plenty of time to catch up with - and surpass - the team's assessment before the clues went cold. And the hand certainly wasn't going anywhere except to a morgue.
> 
> Molly brightened. ”Oh. Ok. That's right. _John._ I keep forgetting his name."
> 
> They stood almost toe-to-toe, neither of them in a hurry to restart the tour.
> 
> His eyes roamed over her face, from the severe part of her ponytail to the softer edges of her hairline then across her temple. Lower, to the hollow where mandible met neck. To the tiny mole in the cool shade of some rather exqusite human architecture.
> 
> He followed her big muscle - the sternocleidomastoid - to the where it wrapped around her clavicle. When he lost sight of those slender bones, hidden under the heavy rolled neck of her sweater, Sherlock’s imagination took over.
> 
> "I haven't had a flatmate since uni," she mused, "but...it's not like... I don't think of you as my flatmate or anything...I just meant it'd might be fun to order a pizza or maybe watch a movie, after Bart's..."
> 
> Sherlock's head snapped back up to her face. The cinema was Mycroft's thing. And he hadn't made a habit of eating at regular intervals since Mummy had to dress him. ”I'll never be here when you're at home," he burted. There was no need for them to uphold the contrivance of a 'social call' - because this wasn't a social call. Their bolthole arrangement was business.
> 
> A professional endeavor.
> 
> A terribly foolish experiment.
> 
> "I can't foresee a scenario in which I'd need to trouble you at all, really," he continued. "Just really good fortune that I’ve made the acquaintance of someone who’s flat is so near to the Overground. I, em, I don't foresee a scenario in which I'd actually need to trouble you. Ever. At all. Really."
> 
> "No...so you said." She struggled to keep from frowning again. Failed. "So...over there is the linen cupboard..." She gestured half-heartedly and fidgeted with the neck of her lumpy, oversized jumper.
> 
> He wondered if she owned any piece of clothing tailored to fit her body correctly.
> 
> _Careful..._
> 
> "Well, em, I've taken up enough of your time."
> 
> Molly nodded but didn't move.
> 
> Neither did he.
> 
> The two of them stood, marooned on a tiny square island of old wood floor.
> 
> Sherlock wasn’t sure which he wanted more: rescue or peril?
> 
> His mobile sounded a forth time. Rescue.
> 
> Damn it.
> 
> "Oh. Yes," she muttered, scooting by him, "Friday night and all. You've got things..." 
> 
> "What? Oh, em, this...?" Sherlock hit the mute button and dropped the phone into his coat pocket. "It's nothing." Nothing so important that it warranted him leaving her company with the edges of her mouth still weighed down. "And... there are those 'house rules' you spoke of?"
> 
> "Oh, Yeah. Right! Em... So rule number one: No Snooping." She wagged her finger at him, her attempt at bluster undermined by the slow upward tick of her mouth. He caught the dimple in her cheek just before she turned round and lead him back toward the lounge.

Sherlock raked a hand through his hair, uneasy with the memory and the warmth seeping into his lower abdomen. He focused his attention on the piece-it-together replica of a human heart atop her bedside chest. It was a garish, bright-colored model that reminded him of the one he'd used in primary school. His index finger skimmed the surface of the right ventricle, hinging it open to reveal the tricuspid valve and lumpy molded plastic meant to depict, rather poorly, trabeculae carneae. He smiled.

He'd wager that there were, at most, two grown women in all of London who kept a plastic human heart at their bedsides.

_Only one. And she lives at 59 Larkhall Rise. And you have her key._

The warmth spread into all sorts of places now. As did the low boil of curiosity.

He picked at a loose chip of paint near the edge of her drawer. His fingernail sank into the soft wood, leaving his mark behind. What would he find if he tugged the cheap brass handle? A notepad of well-intended 'to dos"? A diary of her private thoughts? Cards saved from floral deliveries, the ones signed off 'with love' or something more intimate?

Old pathology journals she'd intended to read but never got around to?

More pictures of her smiling at old boyfriends. Or with them?

Condoms.

He punched out a breath. The last two items came to mind rather quickly.

_"Ohhhh, you know this feeling,"_ his brain hissed, _"the pins and needles of boredom coupled with a dangerous lack of impulse control — a textbook OCD-and-high-anxiety cocktail."_

Garnished with the kind of bone-deep weariness that heightened his insomnia.

A recipe for disaster.

He'd warned her. _"I can get into a lot of trouble,”_

Mycroft snickered at Sherlock from somewhere deep in his brain. _"'Trouble' is a gross understatement, Little Brother."_ Big brother's bolthole warning flickered and buzzed bright as neon:  _"...avoid private residences at all costs."_

__

He should leave, strike out for Brixton or get across the river. Some sort of trouble could always be found in Tottenham.

Decamping to his own address sounded like a better idea.

Or not.

The solitude he'd once enjoyed prior to John Watson's arrival now irritated. With John in Dublin and Mrs. Hudson visiting her sister, the flat's ambient noise grated his nerves. Without a case to pore over, the screeching brakes off Baker Street and the boiler's pitiful belching made him jumpy.

Lestrade hadn't messaged him once this evening. Not once! Millions of people scurrying around this city and they couldn't muster more than a few low-grade B-and-E's between them tonight?

He traced the little vines carved into the face of Molly's drawer.

"Don't be an idiot," he scoffed. Molly Hooper rated an incidental player in his life. His departmental access brokered by Bart's with her attached to the requisites, he reminded himself. If the hospital hadn't managed to secure that one concession, they might not have crossed paths. Ever.

What a shame that would've been.

His fingers glided toward the scrolled drawer pull, their movements well beyond his control.

"Fuck!" The instant his skin came into contact with the brass, static electricity jolted him back to rights. "Damn it," he growled and yanked his hand away with more vigor than the shock warranted. "What the hell are you doing here anyway?"

Sherlock wrestled the serpentine question until he’d flattened it into an exclamation, a statement.

"What.The.Hell."

A reprimand.

Reprimands required penance. Questions warranted investigation. Risks lurked under the surface of both options.

He'd vast experience in the murkier depths on both sides, giving into the base kinds of trouble that even _his_ body lusted after from time to time.

She didn't deserve to be treated in _that_ way. Certainly not in her own flat.

The contents of his breast pocket promised absolution. A lie, of course, but the whiz-bang of a fix tempted, blotting out whatever eroded his edges.

He'd avoided all cravings for a chemical assist in his search for Moriarty. Now, with John out of town, Baker Street sat north of the river like the most comfortable of doss houses. With Molly away, Larkhall Rise fit the bill to the south. And he was already here...

_"So which will it be then?"_ his brain wanted to know, eager to make the acquaintance of either the little envelope of white powder or the baggie of dirty yellow tablets.

He could’ve just as easily made this choice from the genial and relatively impersonal sofa in Molly's lounge rather than the hazy intimacy of her bedroom.

_Easier._

Her scent clung to a robe draped across the bed. The straightforward combination of Castile soap and baby oil muddled his brain. He reached for the wrap, couldn't help himself from gauging its weight without touching it. The fabric slipped over his fingers, nothing more than a wisp of air, featherlight and soft. He closed his eyes. If the lights above her basin caught the thin material just right, one would probably catch a glimpse of the peaks and valleys the robe was ostensibly designed to conceal.

He knew with certainty how the flimsy wrap would mold to her body. The pattern of horizontal creases below the belt loops indicated that, as small as she was, the hem couldn't hit her lower than mid-thigh. The wrinkles had set permanently from repeated wearing directly out of the bath, when her skin was plump and warm.

Sherlock let the cloth fall and sunk his teeth into the inside of his cheek. Hard.  


Molly Hooper’s too short wrap and her too plain soap couldn't interest him, not tonight.

Not ever.

He had to get the hell out of her flat.

He knew it before he'd set out that evening but turned onto Larkhall Rise anyway, pulled by some invisible string. He knew it even before he reached into his pocket for the key she'd given him, the one with the fluorescent pink identifier ring on it.

_Boredom and a dangerous lack of impulse control._

Mycroft chuckled. The familiar, smug noise bounced off the walls of his mind palace. He was under siege here, surrounded by Molly; no whirling lab equipment to drown out the phantom sound of her humming, no corpse laid between them. Just him and her.

There wasn’t enough space to think in here, not that the choice at hand required a thorough review.

Cocaine or the amphetamines?

It was just a matter of "prep" or "no prep".

"Fuck!" he shouted and marched toward the lounge. Belatedly, he softened his steps, remembering Molly's concern for her downstairs neighbors. " _I only point out the floor because if you could avoid it, Sherlock, that'd keep me in good company with the boys downstairs."_

Always worried about someone else. _"Whatever it is, Sherlock, we’ll help you get through it._ ”

She should show more prudence when investing her concern in someone. History indicated that a controlled user with a bank account didn't offer a good return.

He shrugged off his coat and grabbed a glass of water from the filtered pitcher on the kitchen worktop. His body had made the decision without him. At least with the cocaine, he'd come down quickly, preferably landing in a thick black fog of sleep.

The amphetamines would keep him wired for a day or so more.

Sherlock collapsed onto the sofa. He rolled up his sleeve and set about preparing his shot. Only then did he realize that he didn't have a tourniquet on hand.

"Fuck," he mumbled.

He searched her coffee table for suitable supplies. Coasters. The Home section from _The Sunday Times_. A receipt from Bart's canteen with a note scrawled across the top: _I owe you a sausage roll - Jim._

He tossed the receipt aside.

Nothing useful within reach. Molly's flat conspired against him.

Sherlock hoisted himself to his feet and stalked into the bathroom. A quick search of the windowsill basket turned up a purple elastic headband, large enough to use as a tie off.

Back on the sofa, he drew water into the syringe and emptied the contents of his envelope into it. A few taps to release the bubbles and the white powder dissolved beautifully, a sign of its pedigree. He had an excellent chemist.

Once in his veins, he'd take to the nearby streets, see if he could stir up some trouble, ferret Clapham's criminal classes from their dens. After the enjoyable parts of his high wore off, he'd come back here to ride out the lows.

Back on the sofa, Molly's headband proved slippery and uncooperative. Sherlock swore under his breath, unaccustomed to mishandling this part of the ritual. He placed the blame on her addiction to pound store hair elastics.

He doubled the headband up and finally got a good grip. His veins hadn't felt the point of a needle in months, not since he'd found himself with a flatmate. The median antecubital vein in the crook of his arm looked fresh as a daisy once the tourniquet took hold. No need to muck about with the dorsal hand veins or the ones atop his foot.

Sherlock slapped his arm to get the vein to plump up. Once. Twice. A third time. Molly’s house rules accosted him between the beats, soft and unwelcome.

> She plopped down on the sofa. "So rule number two," she said, "No parties. No forensic experiments with the vegetable steamer. No drugs."
> 
> Sherlock blanched. How could she possibly know?
> 
> "Oh. I guess that's three additional house rules come to think of it." She ticked them off again, holding her fingers up to show him. "The parties are number two. The experiments number three. That pushes drugs to number four." She doubled over, snorting and giggling uncontrollably. "So there's four of 'em for you to remember."
> 
> He cleared his throat. "Yes. Well... I... I... It's past time I leave you alone, Molly Hooper."
> 
> _Well past time._
> 
> When Molly looked up at him, he saw the disappointment darkening her eyes. "Oh. I'm sorry. Sherlock. I didn't mean to offend you..."

She hadn't. She'd read him plain as the front page of her _Sunday Times_. He slid off the sofa and sank to the floor.

As low as he could go.

Sherlock bent one knee and propped his arm on it, positioning the needle in the crook of his elbow. The tip tugged at his skin and the outer limits of his reason.

_"Did you make a list?"_ Of all the rules that Mycroft ordered Sherlock to follow, big brother demanded this one be honored no matter what, no matter where.

_Asked._ Mycroft had _asked_ that he follow that one rule.

Sherlock caressed the syringe's plunger with his thumb. A 'list' was hardly necessary tonight considering that he had just the one hit of coke. A single-origin high was hardly worth writing home about.

One push and he'd drill clear through all the rules. 

##  *** * * * ***

"59 Larkhall Rise."

Molly tossed her bag into the taxi. The bright floral canvas fell in a heap on the damp floor. She followed suit, landing in a heap on the cracked bench seat. Exhaustion - mental and physical - had set in somewhere between the frantic phone call from her mum and the interminably long fifty-five-minute flight from Amsterdam back to City airport.

_“Please,”_ she said as an afterthought.

Her attempt at politeness landed flat, listless as the gloomy weather.

"Great," she huffed, sinking into the back seat and reveling under the full weight of her bad mood. Mum would never forgive her rudeness, especially toward a stranger. She insisted that the Hooper girls always display the stiffest of upper lips, preferably curled into their cheeks until the muscles spasmed from the pain.

Complete and total rubbish.

In the emotional frenzy surrounding a holiday cut short by her father's advancing illness, Molly didn't feel much like smiling. She didn't feel much like sleep, either, but her mum made her promise not to travel home tonight. "Go home, get a bit of rest, Molly. Come up first thing and we'll see how things are then. Okay?"

No. It wasn't okay. Her father lay dying in a Cambridgeshire hospital. No amount of smiling or rest would change the cancer’s insidious pathology.

_"The burden of knowing too much about medicine,"_ one of her professors opined, _"is a belief in its future because you’re aware of its limitations in the present."_ "Thank you, Cardiff University, for your excellent education," she mumbled, forcing her lips upward and managing a stiff and bitter sneer. "Probably not what you had in mind is it, mum?”

She mouthed a silent apology to the universe for the bad mood she'd directed at her mother and pressed her temple against the cool glass.

The darkening sky and baritone hum of wheels on asphalt lent a comfortable vagueness to the futuristic landmarks dotting this edge of the city. They sped past West Silvertown station. Its gray, modern platform reminded her of woodlice. The wet steel skeletons of a big construction site at Victoria Dock spouted into view, tower after shiny tower of corporate centers and condominium villages.

Molly hated them all.

As the miles stretched on, she counted down the minutes to go until they'd pull off the motorway and stopped in front of her squat 125-year-old building. Never mind that the flat rarely felt fully heated or that the pipes knocked. These newer additions to the skyline set too quick a pace into the future for her tonight, flaunting their brash profiles and sharp edges.

She fidgeted in the back seat, eager to melt into flannel pyjama bottoms, a tepid pizza, and a cheap glass of wine. Sometimes she missed the camaraderie of a flatmate or a regular boyfriend. Not tonight, though. She'd a pity party planned with an exclusive guest list of one.

Her taxi made good time. Soon, the high-rise majority on the outskirts morphed into the democratic center; old and new mingling together.

As if sensing her mood, the clouds did what they could, blotting out the upper floors of the pointy building under construction on her side of the Thames.

_Her side_. She only ever thought of it that way in relation to _his side_. Otherwise, _her side_ was just 'south of the river'. No pronouns necessary.

Sherlock’s side, crowded with posh old buildings and monuments; kings and queens; impossibly beautiful gardens. His side, with the secret lanes and cramped pubs listed on the national registry, and the fashionable ‘gritty’ neighbourhoods.

His side suited him like the fine tailored trousers and jackets he wore to effortless perfection. As undernourished as he sometimes appeared, his clothes always managed to skim his body like water over smooth stone.

Molly felt underdressed north of the river.

Bugger! She’d managed two and half days on holiday not thinking of him. Now, the moment she touched down, he closed in. He wrapped around her like the tails of his big black coat.

“Idiot,” she scoffed, not quite sure which one of them fit the description better.

“This is the fastest way, Miss!” the cabbie protested, “If you’re gonna be mad at anything, not my driving. It’s the rain!”

“What? Oh! No! Sorry! I didn’t mean anything. I meant him.”

“Who?”

“Me. Him. Both of us…” She waved her hand to dispel _his_ phantom presence. The cabbie shot a wary look over his shoulder. Molly sank deeper into the backseat trying to avoid further notice as best she could. He probably thought her a schizophrenic.

_Aren't you?_

No!

Yes.

She’d set aside all thoughts of him while away. Traipsing around Amsterdam with her best friend set Molly right. In just two short days, they'd stayed out way too late, flirted way too much, and drank too many calories - like a couple of free-spirited kids with high metabolisms on a gap year.

Time and distance (and one or two puffs at a coffee house) tempered the annoying Mr. Holmes's allure. Practically tarnished it!

_Annoying and beautiful._

No!

Yes.

Her holiday wasn't completely devoid of Holmesian thoughts, though.

When Maddie opted out of a side trip to Museum Vrolik on their second afternoon together, Molly couldn't help thinking of him as she wandered the glass display cases. The shelves crowded over with pale, rubbery specimens. She spent hours inspecting the abnormal organs, the deformed fetuses, and the stillbirths suspended in their jars of liquid fixative.

She understood her friend's aversion to the exhibit. Not everyone found beauty in the delicate serenity of the museum's most grotesque curiosities.

Sherlock would.

Molly imagined him sauntering from case to case, hands clasped behind his back, peering into the displays, lavishing each painfully curved spine and oversized head with the full wattage of his attention. She got so lost in the thought that she'd imagined his tight-lipped grin skipping across the back of her neck, the ghost of his voice whispering, _“Well, It’d be rude to travel all this way and not pay one’s respects, Molly Hooper.”_

Later that same evening, after Maddie recounted her day of sightseeing by bike, Molly shared the 'less gross' details of her museum visit - and avoided all mention of the fully-clothed orgasm that she may or may not have had in the middle the exhibition room.

No sense in worrying her best friend further. She already found Molly's attraction to a loner who whipped corpses as a hobby a dubious character trait. Erotic daydreams in full view of the disfigured dead might sink their friendship for good.

And then he was gone. _Poof!_ No more thoughts on him. Until she'd landed.

London belonged to Sherlock; impossible after meeting him not to look at the skyline, the river, the maze of streets without his profile getting in the way of the view.

Damn him.

She owed the universe another apology, surely, for allowing the man to invade her thoughts in light of her father's condition.

Molly knew her daydreams for what they were: a mildly addictive escape from the challenges ahead; as low-grade a habit as her daily espresso... which had increased to two espressos a day since her father's condition had become grave.

She should give up both the caffeine and the detective before her insomnia got any worse. Starting now.

A shallow sigh escaped her lips, too weak for a serious conviction. She aspired to one of those long-winded noises, a gale force gust to clear her head… of the kind Sherlock made whenever something or someone annoyed him.

Bugger!

She reached into her bag for something to fiddle with, her phone, a tube of hand cream, anything other than thoughts of him. “You’ve gotta kick this habit, old girl,” she mumbled.

“There’s no smoking in the cab, Miss,” the cabbie warned.

“Oh…em, no! it’s not…I’m not… I’m just talking to myself. Sorry!”

The old man eyed her from the mirror. "There's no drugging either. You take drugs, I throw you out," he warned.

"What? No. NO! I'm not... It's... just an expression. Sorry. Again."

Sorry indeed. The cabbie had her pegged right.

_She was a junky._

The taxi merged left onto Tower Bridge, proof that the universe had accepted her earlier apology. The cabbie opted for the more scenic route rather than committing to the grim tunnel. Molly angled herself to get a better view of the sparkly lights glittering on the water as North London receded behind her.

She turned back round and faced forward, faced fact that she'd adult worries ahead of her tonight and in the days to come. Such a beautiful diversion but he wasn't a cure for insomnia. Or cancer.

"Good night Sherlock Holmes wherever you may be," she said, a note of finality in her voice.

##  *** * * * ***

The syringe fell to the floor.

Sherlock undid the tourniquet and took a deep breath. The rush of cool, dark air made his head swim. Was everyone aware that molecules had tints and hues or just him? Did John, for instance, feel the full spectrum of orange, from underripe melon to burnt amber, when he smelled phosphorous? Or did his subconscious just imagine a flat, dull 'orange' because that's what the Corey, Pauling, and Koltun colour convention had trained every first-year chemistry student the world over to see?

He made a mental note to ask his flatmate.

_Later._ Now he just wanted peace.

Sherlock rested his head on his outstretched arm. The atmosphere swirled around him, bumping up against his exposed skin. He casually identified its less romantic properties of temperature and weight: chilly where it grazed the sensitive underside of his forearm; icy at the nape of his neck. Like a breath over the helix of his ear; heavy as a boulder on his chest.

Then their sounds: the sharp zing! of oxygen and nitrogen as they assaulted his mouth, his nose; the toxic, menacing rumble of carbon dioxide as he exhaled. He heard waves of half-notes and whole, sharps and flats.

He followed the symphony as it danced through his body, as it morphed into Bach.

_Allemanda... Sarabanda... Ciaccona..._

The music grew louder, seeping from of his ears into the space around him and tuning everything else out.

Except for Molly.

He didn't hear the squeaking of hinges as the door to her flat opened. Or the bag as it landed on the floor.

But he heard her voice; tired and gentle.

Accusatory.

"What are you doing?!"

 

### Liner Notes

Yeah, Song 4 is Sherlock POV-heavy, y'all. He's got issues.

Corinne Bailey Rae was a BBC Radio darling a decade ago - and for good reason. Her lyrics just sort of caress you. You're humming along, tapping your foot and then BAM! all those feels. Certainly, Molly Hooper is awash in feels but she's doing her best to ride the wave, wondering when fury will toss her back to shore and just sort of... disappear without too much fuss? She's a smart woman though. She knows the tide's gonna pull her out to a brooding, sable-curled sea. And she's not altogether opposed to drowning.

Sherlock Holmes - I imagine he's an excellent swimmer. With that body, how could he not be ;) He's managed to stay well out of the emotional relationship deep end - be it platonic or romantic - his whole life, aggressively so. Now he's got Molly and John circling him, to say nothing of his landlady. For him, nothing good comes from falling in love. Period. Full stop. Fin. 

Careful, Sherlock. There's a rip current ahead.

**Post Script I:** I know! I know! I wish they'd get to the safe harbour of each other's arms faster but, in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "Um... _noooooooo._ "

**Post Script II:** LOL! Just realized that, in addition to asking Sherlock Holmes out whilst he had a whip in his hand, I inadvertently just wrote badass Molly Hooper asking him if he'd like to come over for some 'Netflix  & chill'. Srsly, she's the bravest gal I know, a true fucking rock star. He's not worthy of her. At all.


End file.
